Re: theory and practice (Re: URIs for Physical Items)

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 11:40:14AM -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> At 11:12 AM 10/27/00 -0400, Michael Mealling wrote:
> >On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 10:34:55AM -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> >> At 09:35 AM 10/27/00 -0400, it was written:
> >> I worry that some people see all that's come so far as a barrier to what
> >> they really want to do, without a whole lot of concern for what everyone
> >> else might want to do.  Top-down specification doesn't seem to be doing
> >> much to get developers excited and put URIs into the world.
> >
> >Simon, I'm worried that your view is colored by not being aware of
> >how people are actually using URIs outside of XML based applications.
> >That list (plus others registered by the IANA) that Leslie posted 
> >is a good example of URIs that are being widely used in places that
> >have no relationship to XML at all (or even web browsers for that matter). 
> >Are you explicitly ignoring them or are you just not aware of them?
> 
> Did I mention that the URI core community consistently interprets any
> questioning of its mission as ignorance of basic facts, another factor
> which doesn't endear it to non-URI-loving developers?  Condescension isn't
> exactly a well-known successful marketing strategy.

I was being condescending. I was being serious. Take a look at what ENUM
and CNRP are doing with URIs. A CNRP URI would probably be completely
inappropriate for identifying/naming an XML component....

> I'm well-aware of the schemes Leslie listed.  Several of them are in fact
> 'contenders for the side of a bus', and many of them are commonly used in
> the 'guy on the street' understanding of URIs.

Sure. So what's wrong with them?

> A lot of people fall off the bus, however, once it's no longer possible to
> make the connection between the URI and the thing identified.  HTTP, FTP,
> and email all provide infrastructures for that.  URIs generically don't,
> and I've yet to see a straightforward explanation of why that is so exciting.

It's not exciting because it was never intended to be so. Its kind of boring
actually. URIs by themselves were never intended to solve problems like
that. We don't build big huge infrastructures. We come up with itty bitty
pieces and let communities take thsoe and build them into something useful
to them.

I'm curious though, what's your preferred solution? I disagree that there's
a problem but I'm curious what your solution to your problem might look like?

-MM



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Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
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Received on Friday, 27 October 2000 12:57:40 UTC